WATCH: Illinois DCFS can’t locate documents showing number of missing children

By Greg Bishop | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Documents to show the number of missing youth in care from the Department of Children and Family Services still “have not been located.”

The Center Square’s Freedom of Information Act request for the number of missing children from 2019 to 2025, filed on Oct. 21, still has not been fulfilled. The FOIA officer said “Once the documents are located, assuming they exist, the FOIA office will review and release records as appropriate.”

The response comes despite state House candidate Bailey Templeton receiving a FOIA response in early October showing a nearly 1,000% increase in the number of missing children from 2023 to 2024 for a total of 166. A DCFS spokesperson told The Center Square that the previously released numbers were “not completely accurate.”

Republican state Sen. Chapin Rose sits on the bipartisan Legislative Audit Commission.

“Continually, DCFS is really the most important agency in our state and yet continually under Gov. [J.B.] Pritzker, it’s the most, it’s the worst run agency,” Rose told The Center Square. “I mean, it’s just when you were this poorly managed, this poorly run, it should shock no one that you’ve had this kind of a run up.”

Pritzker said Wednesday after an unrelated event that he has made “enormous improvements in DCFS” since taking office.

“When I came in office, for example, the Department of Children Family Services was in terrible shape and we had to invest in and it took us several years to hire up and make sure we’re delivering what people really need,” Pritzker told reporters. “But thank goodness we’ve made enormous improvements in DCFS and across state government, which have been hollowed out by my Republican predecessor, who left us in a shambles.”

Despite those comments, the agency has not been able to locate updated numbers of missing youth in care for an open records request filed by The Center Square on Oct. 21.

Rose said Pritzker has not made the agency better.

“My goodness, these are kids. I mean, like job one ought to be getting DCFS functional, as an agency,” Rose said. “And yet, you know, continuously for six years of Governor Pritzker, we just see, you know, sort of this kind of willful indifference”

Since Pritzker took office in 2019, there have been numerous lawsuits against the agency and three different directors.

The state budget has $2.5 billion from taxpayers going to the agency, an increase of $1.2 billion since fiscal year 2019, according to the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget.